Corruption and Trust: Exceptionalism in Asian Democracies?

Abstract

While voluminous studies have attributed the continuing decline of institutional trust to political corruption, the link between corruption and institutional trust in Asia has yet to be explored systematically. Testing the effect of corruption on institutional trust is theoretically important and empirically challenging, since many suggest that contextual factors in Asia, such as political culture and electoral politics, might neutralize the negative impact of corruption. Utilizing data from the East Asia Barometer, we find a strong trust-eroding effect of political corruption in Asian democracies. We also find no evidence that contextual factors lessen the corruption-trust link in Asia. The trust-eroding effect holds uniformly across all countries examined in this study and remains robust even after taking into account the endogenous relationship between corruption and trust.

Polluted Air Increases Perceived Corruption

“…As Treisman (2000) stated, regardless of the accuracy of perceived corruption, it could exert consequences as serious as the corruption itself. For example, corruption perception erodes institutional trust (Chang & Chu, 2006;Morris & Klesner, 2010). The current results imply that politicians need to pay attention to environmental problems if they want to increase in the public's trust in them.…”

Public Trust in Government in China and South Korea: Implications for Building Community Resilience

“…Results of several studies suggest that citizens' perception of economic and political performance is highly associated with their trust in government (Mishler & Rose, 2001;Newton, 1999;Orren, 1997). In Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Kim, Public and Thailand, Chang and Chu (2006) demonstrated that the level of citizens' perception of corruption is inversely related to their trust in government institutions. Scholars in the public administration field have also emphasized that citizen participation leads to enhanced compromise, cooperation, and consideration of diverse policy options, as well as increased legitimacy of the decision-making process and deliberative democracy (Andrain & Smith, 2006;Nelson & Wright, 1995).…”

Bagaimanakah Persepsi Keterpercayaan Masyarakat terhadap Elit Politik?

“…Chang dan Chu (2006); Morris dan Klesner (2010) juga menggambarkan bahwa kepercayaan ini berkaitan dengan pandangan akan kapabilitas pemerintah di dalam memenuhi apa yang masyarakat butuhkan dan inginkan. Hal tersebut tidak terlepas dari pemahaman di masyarakat bahwa korupsi hanya mengarahkan pada konteks ketidakadilan dan ketidaksetaraan (Chang & Chu, 2006). Ketika korupsi banyak merajalela pada tingkat elit politik, maka kekuasaan yang dimiliki hanya memberikan manfaat dan kemudahan bagi para diri sendiri maupun kelompoknya.…”